Legislative efforts could make it easier to recall public officials

Gov. Scott Walker survived his recall election in Wisconsin, but his opponents at least got the statewide referendum they wanted on whether he should stay or go. In New Jersey, citizens who think an elected official has failed at the job rarely make it that far because it’s so intimidatingly difficult to put a recall question on the ballot.

A committee of Trenton residents who believed Mayor Tony Mack should be fired found out how hard it is the hard way. Their prodigious effort last year netted them 8,500 petition signatures, but the number was more than 1,300 short of the 25 percent of the city’s registered voters that the state constitution requires for a recall election.

Attempts are under way in the Legislature to make it a little easier to force a political officeholder to face another vote of the people before his or her term ends. The leaders of the movement are the 14th District’s Sen. Linda Greenstein (D-Plainsboro) and Assemblyman Wayne DeAngelo (D-Hamilton), who have sponsored a proposed constitutional amendment on the subject, SCR82 and ACR142.

Among those who support a change is the author of the 1994 amendment that created the current recall procedure, former Sen. Bill Schluter (R-Pennington). When he and others crafted the amendment, Schluter told the Senate State Government Committee recently, they thought it essential that voters should be given a mulligan “only when there was genuine public concern about the competency, integrity and other attributes of the elected official who was being targeted.”

They made the process so tough, however, that only a handful of elected officials have been removed in the 18-plus years since recall became available. The last time was in December 2009, when Wildwood voters, upset over high property taxes and high spending, voted by 56 percent to dismiss Mayor Ernie Troiano Jr. and Commissioner Bill Davenport. (Seventeen months later, the constituents were in a forgiving mood and re-elected Troiano to the city commission, which then reappointed him mayor.)

“Experience has shown that petition signers amounting to at least 25 percent of registered voters is too high a hurdle in many situations for recall to be viable,” Schluter told the Senate committee. “I agree that the figure should be reduced to a level where recall will serve the purpose of removal for ‘just cause’ without it being so low that it will lead to political chicanery.”

However, Schluter thinks the specific revision proposed by Greenstein and DeAngelo “will not produce a fair number. In fact, it will make matters worse.” Their amendment would change the required number of petition signers from 25 percent of the registered voters to 25 percent of the voter turnout in the last general election in the district of the official to be removed. This figure could vary widely, Schluter pointed out, depending on whether the last election was a high-turnout presidential race or an off-year congressional or legislative contest, when voter interest and participation drop off sharply.

For example, if the recall campaign in Trenton had been conducted under SCR82 in the year after the 2008 presidential election, it would have needed 6,557 petition signatures to succeed, but if it had been conducted in 2012, after the 2011 off-year legislative races, only 1,894 signatures would have been required.

Either number would have been much more attainable than the 9,860 signatures that the Tony Mack recall effort actually had to collect under the existing law. Nevertheless, Schluter told the senators, “This disparity makes no sense, and would undermine a sound recall program. Political opportunists would game the system in the years following low turnouts when it is easier to obtain the requisite petition signatures.”

Schluter’s suggested fix for SCR82 would be to retain the present requirement that petition circulators obtain a fixed percentage of the district’s registered voters, but to lower the number from 25 percent to a more “reasonable” 12 or 15 percent.

The Senate committee members commented that Schluter’s proposals “made sense” and would add a needed predictability to the process. Sen. Greenstein told me she, too, liked the former senator’s suggestions. She made it clear that her amendment is still a work in progress.

Greenstein believes that a recall movement should have to be “triggered” by a serious failing on the part of the elected official, and not just buyer’s remorse by the voters. Official charges of corruption or malfeasance of the kind facing Hamilton Mayor John Bencivengo would provide such a trigger, she said, but she’s uncertain whether a case such as that of Tony Mack — where “there’s this widespread feeling of, I guess you’d call it, gross incompetence” — would meet the test.

“I don’t want recall to be used to harass elected officials in office by their political opponents,” she said. “I do want it to be used for the most serious cases. So I want to make sure the language we have in there serves that purpose.”